"Our Dance is turned into Mourning": A Symposium on Loss and Consolation in Early Modern Europe

Keynote Speaker: Lynn Enterline, Professor and Nancy Perot Chair in the Department of English, Vanderbilt University

The early modern (1500-1700) European discourse on loss is capacious yet particular. In the texts and artifacts of the period, loss emerges as a moral and epistemological problem, a political crisis, the performance of gendered subjectivity and religious identity, a literary trope, and more. Moreover, loss destabilizes the very notion of a European state — in a world dramatically altered by the rise of capitalism, the new colonial practices of European imperial powers, radical developments in geography and astronomy, and religious violence, political, cultural, and literal boundaries are distended and dissolved. The loss entailed by such phenomena consistently crystallizes around “Europe”: Europe is lost for the religious minorities fleeing for North America and for laborers voyaging along new trade routes. The Reformation and its consequences lead to a loss of control throughout Europe for the papacy and a loss of head for England’s Charles I. European power is the agent of diasporic loss for the early victims of the Atlantic slave trade. Even as loss assumes new forms, on new scales, in these centuries, so too does consolation, as individuals, communities, and states alike seek salves and buffers. Meanwhile, on the stage and the page, loss and consolation find new purchase and new expression throughout early modern Europe.

The aim of this symposium is to think the double notion of loss and consolation – and changes within that double notion between cultures and over time – as it suffuses and traverses the early modern European landscape. In particular, this double notion needs to be rethought as a point of contact between disciplines, sub-disciplines, concepts, and theories. The historical and cultural study of loss and its antidotes in early modern Europe can be a productive site at which disciplines themselves “lose” their bearings and discover the resources of other academic contexts and frameworks.

Accessibility

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